


pale green things

by RaccoonDoom



Category: Motorcity
Genre: Child Soldiers, Gen, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jacob trying to help but being sorta bad at it, Minor Injuries, well. the aftermath of being a child soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 13:26:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10103879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaccoonDoom/pseuds/RaccoonDoom
Summary: It's hard when you abandon the only way of life you've ever known and now nothing makes any sense. It's hard and maybe, maybe, there are actually a couple of people who understand.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is set around 2 weeks after Mike fucked off from Deluxe. Idk how he would have met Jacob, but for all intents and purposes lets just say that Jacob either knew or worked with one of Mike's parents a long while back, but they never actually met before now. Also, Mike is probably highkey being The Most Helpful Person, Ever, because he feels like he has to earn his right to stay there.
> 
> I know in canon that Jacob's gardens actually look very nice and professional, but please just let me have this redneck jury-rigged indoor garden. Like. C'mon. It's more realistic like that.

Of all the new and fantastic things Mike was finding in Motorcity, he decided that plants were definitely one of his favorite. He didn’t care for the taste of them, mostly, but there was something incredible about the fact that they were _alive_ and _growing_ , everywhere from windowsills to cracks in the pavement.

He had seen Jacob’s kitchen garden off from the garage a few times in the week and a half he’d been in Motorcity, but had never actually gotten the time to look around. That is, not until he finished cleaning up the garage and realized it was well past 11 and it wouldn’t hurt anyone to just _look_ , right? The curiosity was eating him alive. Just… just a peek.

-

It looked like the place had been torn straight from an Old-Detroit magazine. The soft, electrical hum of the fluorescent grow lights was the only noise save for the distant sound of traffic outside, and the growing plants illuminated in the otherwise-darkness of the garage gave the entire place a magical, dreamlike aura. The only other source of light came from the faint neon spilling through the windows, and the dim streetlight outside like an artificial moon.

Mike walked as quietly as he could through the rows, wonderstruck at the sheer variety. The shapes of the leaves, the size of the plants, even the shades of green were all unique. Each of the containers was labeled with blocky handwriting in blue or black or red, usually on a piece of masking tape, but occasionally written directly on the container itself--like the shallow cardboard box with a dozen little sprouts that had BOLTS scribbled out and RADISHES written underneath. There was a row of yellow, rectangular buckets with tough-looking shrubs labeled “POTATOES”, and Mike was pretty sure that potatoes didn’t look like that, but what did he know? He held one of the leaves between his fingers, and it felt nothing like the few KaneCo-approved air-scrubbing houseplants he’d seen.

One row was just a bookshelf modified to hold grow-lights, laden with old jars and pots and half-rusted cans, all filled with small, leafy plants. The tape on the side of the shelf said “HERBS”. They were.. pretty weird, actually; the ones labeled "DILL" were feathery and light-colored, and the "PARSELY" had jagged leaves, and about 4 different ones even looked like they had a fine coating of hair on them, and all of them smelled funny. At the end of the middle shelf, there was a clear glass jar with a fragile-looking‘herb’, and it was _purple_ and Mike could just make out the corner of the masking tape label. He twisted the jar to read what it said--

Or, he would have, if he hadn’t fumbled his grip and knocked the jar off the shelf.

The sound of glass shattering was blisteringly loud, leaving a void of silence in its absence like the afterimage of a flash of light. Dirt and glass shards were scattered across the floor, and Mike was frozen. Only for half a second, though, because then his brain and his body hopped back on the same wavelength and he launched into damage control on instinct. 

The first thing he did was pick up the plant, so delicately that he was barely touching it, and brushed off the glass and dirt from its leaves. When he held it up, the top half flopped over, the stem broken and hanging on by just a few hair-thin fibers. His stomach twisted at the sight, and he placed it in the empty spot where the jar used to be.

He didn’t see a broom when he glanced around the room, so he settled for scooping up the worst of the mess into his bare hands. He grimaced as the glass shards bit into his palms, but ignored it in favor of finding somewhere to put the mess. He didn’t know if it was like, special dirt, so he shouldn’t throw it away, but there were glass shards in it now, and he didn't know if that ruined it or not. He was probably getting blood in it too, that couldn’t be good for it. Maybe there was an empty container to put it in? 

He was still frowning indecisively at his handful of dirt when the side door burst open, and oh, there was the broom, Jacob had it in his hands like a sparkstaff and looked ready to swing. Mike tried very hard not to curl in on himself. 

It didn’t make any sense, then, that when Jacob saw him, he relaxed and dropped the broom down. 

“Oh, it’s just you, kid!” He rested his hands on top of the broomhandle. “Thought I had an intruder. Or those dang mutant rats!”

Mike smiled at that, just a little bit. Mutant rats, like the ones from the scary stories the older kids used to tell in the group home. 

“So, whatcha got there?” Jacob asked, and Mike stopped smiling.

“Uh--” he wasn’t going to lie, or play it down, or try to get out of punishment--he wasn’t a dang intern-- he just… he hadn’t known Jacob for very long, but he already didn’t want to disappoint him. He took a quick, deep breath.

“I hurt one of your plants, and I’m really sorry, I know I shouldn’t have been in here without permission, it won’t happen again--” ha, yeah, if he gets kicked out it _really_ won’t happen again. His stomach was still knotted up, and he wanted desperately to run out into the dark, neon-lit street. Guilt was a feeling that didn’t belong in a place this green. 

He looked back down at the soil and glass in his hands.

“--I’ll make it up to you.” Somehow. You can’t exactly repair a broken plant like a piece of tech. 

When he looked up, Jacob’s eyes had gone sad-soft and gentle, and Mike felt exponentially worse.

He opened his mouth to apologize, or--backpedal, or something, but Jacob raised his hand in a gesture that looked to vaguely mean “stop doing what you’re doing.” Mike shut his mouth.

“Don’t worry about it, kid. It’s not that important.” 

“But--,” Mike began, back-talking against his own better judgement, because Jacob must not _understand_ , “it was _yours_ , though, and I broke it and it’s _my fault_ \--,” and he stopped, searching for words he didn’t have to tell Jacob why he shouldn’t think this was unimportant. 

Jacob rubbed a hand over his jaw and let out a breath that wasn’t quite a sigh. 

“I’m not gonna get mad at you, Mike,” he said patiently. “Put that dirt down, you can clean it up later.”

Mike let his handful drop to the floor, surreptitiously trying to wipe off the clumps that stuck to his hands where the glass had opened stinging cuts. Jacob had too keen of an eye, though.

“Let’s get those cleaned up, huh?” He waited for Mike to move forward before heading back upstairs. The sound of the dirt and glass crunching under Mike’s shoes as he followed made his ears hurt.

-

“I know first aid,” Mike said, hunched over the sink, watching the diluted stream of mud and blood flow down the drain. It was required training for all cadets, even though he’d never been very good at it. “I can take care of it myself.”

“I have no doubt,” Jacob said, making no move to leave, rooting through the container he had pulled from one of the cabinets.

The water here was a lot colder than the water in Deluxe. 

“Why are you doing this for me?” he asked, and it wasn’t about the bandages, but he figured Jacob would know that. “Not like I’ve done anything to deserve it.”

“Because I was in the exact same spot, a long time ago, and I didn’t have anyone to help me,” Jacob replied, as serious as Mike had seen him yet. “No one should have to go through that alone. Especially not a kid.”

Mike stared at the cuts on his hands, still dripping water and blood into the sink.

“I’m not a kid.” He hadn’t been a kid for a long time. Not since he was 6 years old and his mom died, not since he was 10 and recruited to the junior cadets. He especially wasn't a kid now. Not after everything.

Jacob read the label on one of the boxes of Deluxe-brand adhesive bandage strips, hesitated, then placed it on the counter. He slowly sighed. When he looked over at Mike, he just looked... tired.

“Yeah. I guess you aren’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't as long as i would have liked it to be, so there might be a rewrite one day in the future. 
> 
> I feel like Jacob would have a lot of guilt over the fact that he developed a lot of the wartech that Kane has now, and he'd probably blame himself, at least partially, for the world Mike and the others ended up being born into. I like to think that Jacob helps the kids partially out of a mindset of "I half-started the fight they're in, the least I can do is help them finish it". Also, as great as he is, I don't feel like he's make the best parental figure in the world. He tries, though.


End file.
